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Post-election Reconciliation

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By: Joe Mauricio

 

Whatever the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election (winner announcement still hanging as of deadline), more than forty fi ve-percent of voters will feel disgusts and betrayals. A lot of comments from Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms are leading to the efforts to heal the divisions created by the presidential election, and once again to repair the social fabric and to restore trust and civility.

What have we, as Filipinos or Filipino Americans learned in the past political engagements with or against each other in these last elections? How true is the saying, “Mahusay lang and Pinoy sa papelan?” Are they a lot smarter, doer and engager than that? Do they need to get better at engaging in logical political arguments? Do they need reconciliation motives after engaging in unreasonable name-callings and shouting matches?

For me, civility is better than incivility, love is better than hate. Done wrong and feeling unforgiveness, however, could compound our everyday lives and political problems. So before embarking on a road to bridge building, ask yourselves just where you’re trying to go, mostly for people of widely divergent political stances right now.

We can assuredly direct questions to the Trump supporters who feel left behind by the changing economy and culture, to the Black Lives Matters’ mistrust of the establishment’s politics and institutions, to socialist Bernie Sanders’ supporters who are wary of elite neo-liberal conspiracies, etcetera. For all these people, there is always a good reason not to sign on too soon to any kind of reunion and reconciliation as all of them want to disrupt the status quo. None of them is going to pledge civility, if doing so might man forfeiting the necessary exercise of civic power — that’s proper.

For the Filipino voters’ matters of political entanglements or disentanglements, you can’t easily get a reconciliation without delving into the truth. Re-humanization doesn’t require that we try to like each other. It requires only that “we try” to see and hear each other. That we feel the pain, pride, and hope, and fear of our putative antagonists.

This is the reconciliation for grown-ups like us. It doesn’t pretend that all will be peaceful, or that it should be. It acknowledges the never-endingness of our fi ghts.

 

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